LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Chicago Teachers Walk Out, Charter Schools Unaffected. “Between the charters and the community groups, one begins to get the sense that Chicago — surely representative, in this, of cities and towns across the nation — is having to rebuild a civic society in the gaps left by the official government structure. That is, the official government structure is not so much ‘the only thing we all belong to’ as akin to some outside organization that communities must be prepared to work around.”

UPDATE: A suspicious reader emails: “It MAY be ALL coincidental, but within the last couple of weeks, my cousin told me about a truly diabolical plan for election ‘optics.’ He is a Longshoreman in Texas. His union was considering going on strike for the sole purpose of allowing BHO to intervene and settle the labor dispute and look like either a uniter or maybe even tough on unions. So, when I saw that Rahm’s teachers went on strike in spite of a 16% pay raise offer, my mind went places that logic would never take it, but modern day politics do. Worth watching anyway. Also, to protect my cousin from retribution from union thugs, I suppose it would be best to avoid attribution here.”

Sounds a bit contrived, but who knows? Under Obama, we’ve gone to a lot of places where logic would never have taken us. . . .